Wednesday word: 十手 (jitte or jutte)

[trellia-chan.livejournal.com]

十手: (spelled "jitte" or "jutte" in the English alphabet)  Pronounced "joot" or "joo-te"

Literal Japanese translation: "ten hands."



The jitte was a weapon that was carried by police in Edo Period Japan. It was carried by all ranks of police officers during official business and also served as a substitute for a badge. It is also the subject of Jittejutsu (十手術), a martial art developed by law enforcment officers meant to disarm and apprehend criminals (who were usually carrying a sword.)

In the anime franchise Lupin III, the character Inspector Koichi Zenigata often carries an antique jitte passed down from his ancestor, Heiji Zenigata, a police officer in the Edo period from a completely unrelated series of fictitious stories.

Thursday word: lunette

[prettygoodword.livejournal.com]

lunette (loo-NET) - n., any of various crescent- or semicircular-shaped things, including:

• (Arch.) any wall surface under an arch or vault, or a painting or other decoration filling same;
• (Arch.) an opening to admit light in a dome;
• (Mil.) a fortification with two projecting faces forming a wedge plus two flanks with an open gorge;
• the hole in a guillotine in which the victim's neck is placed;
• (Farriery) a half horseshoe, lacking the ends;
• (Geol.) a broad, low-lying, typically crescent-shaped mound of sandy or loamy soil formed by the wind, especially along the windward side of a lake basin.

Plus other even more obscure meanings. In short, all sorts of things that look like a half-full or crescent moon tend to get named after the moon -- in this case, borrowing from French lunette, diminutive of lune (from Latin luna).

Above the small altar was a lunette depicting the Christ child with a lamb and a peaceable lion.

---L.